William Edwin Self (June 21, 1921 – November 15, 2010) was an American television and film producer who began his career as an actor.
[citation needed] Edwin and Elizabeth (Elsie) Fundus Self, a homemaker, had two children: William and Jean LaVerne Self (later Bright).
Back in Dayton, Self bought Tilden's book, Match Play and the Spin of the Ball,[3] and talked his parents into purchasing him a tennis racket.
When he came to Los Angeles in 1944, as an unknown and untried actor, his skill at tennis allowed him to make important contacts.
He regularly played with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, and Jack L. Warner, among other Hollywood notables.
[citation needed] Another film that sparked a lifelong interest was Annie Oakley (1936), which starred Barbara Stanwyck.
To research this project, Self, age seventeen, persuaded his family to travel to Cody, Wyoming, so that Self could study the Oakley scrapbooks in the small log structure which housed the Buffalo Bill Museum.
He also persuaded the museum's founder and curator, Mary Jester Allen (Buffalo Bill's niece), to name him Assistant Historian.
The book was never published, but Self went on to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center: the five-museum, five-football-fields-sized outgrowth of the original institution.
Self also appeared in four films directed by Howard Hawks, including Red River (1948) and the science fiction cult classic, The Thing from Another World (1951).
Many notable actors appeared as guest stars including Anthony Quinn, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Walter Brennan, Ronald Reagan, Rod Steiger, Charles Bronson, and James Dean.
Other notable Fox series of the time included Daniel Boone (1964–1969), Twelve O'Clock High (1964–1967), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–1968), Lost in Space (1965–1968), The Green Hornet (1966–1967), The Monroes (1966 TV series) (1966–1967), The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968–1970), Land of the Giants (1968–1970), and Room 222 (1969–1972).
[8] Self left Fox in 1975 to partner with Mike Frankovich in the development and production of television and feature films.
These were The Shootist (1976), John Wayne's last film, and From Noon Till Three (1976) starring Charles Bronson.
A year later, he took on a new challenge when he accepted the position of Vice President in Charge of Television Movies and Mini-Series, also for CBS.
Self married Margaret Lucille Flynn of Spokane, Washington, his college sweetheart, in 1941, a union which lasted until her death in 2007.
He had been involved in non-profit work for many years, serving on the Board of Trustees of the John Tracy Clinic, the Motion Picture and Television Fund, and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.
Self died on November 15, 2010, at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center after suffering a heart attack four days earlier.